“When my husband died,” she said, “people came for about a month. They brought casseroles. They sent cards. Then they stopped. Everybody went back to their lives. That’s what people do. I understand it. I did it myself, for other people, for years.” She looked out the window at the oak
tree. “And then it was just me. In this big house. With forty-two windows and nobody to look out of them with.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“I was going to sell the house,” she said. “That spring. Before I found your card at the library. I had a real estate agent coming on a Friday. I thought, what’s the point? What’s the point of staying here, just me and the dust?”
“But you didn’t sell it.”
“No.” She turned back to me. “Because you came on Thursday. And you cleaned my oven. And you lined my picture frames up with the dust marks so they wouldn’t move a quarter of an inch.”
